Blackened Pottery
by Elinor W
Summary: Dan and James, a Potter and a Black, together, Hogwarts will never be the same.


Chapter 1: The Beginning  
  
That was when I first saw him, a green eyed kid dressed in the uniform of a Nurselenny orphan. I was sitting at Dare E Products spooning my way through a large ice cream. He was in Diagon Alley to get his stuff for school I was guessing. "Hey, kid, come on over." The green eyes looked my way and I grinned, he slowly walked over and murmured a greeting under his breath. I grinned again, "I'm James, who're you." He looked up at me a bit oddly, and I could have sworn that I knew those green eyes in glasses.  
  
He tilted his head to one side and murmured, "I'm Dan, pleased to meet you." I shook off the polite greeting.I hadn't been raised polite and I was my father's son.  
  
"My pa should be around soon. Want to meet him? He was a convicted murderer, just like his dad." a hand came over my back and covered up my mouth. My pa's voice chuckled from behind me, "Ah little sonny, so you've met my grandchild, who'll you be then, I'm Calvin Black."  
  
Dan gaped, as I'd hoped he would and he murmured, "I'm Daniel, Daniel Potter." Now it was my turn to gape. "You're Harry Potter's grandkid?" Dan broke out into a grin, "Yeah, he's my grandpa." I stared at him, "You're the great grandkid of the Potter I'm named after? James Potter that is?" Dan nodded, "And you're my great grandpa's best friend's grandkid?" This time I nodded and we stared at each other, already fast friends. I was always forward and forthcoming and I spun around, "Pa, can Dan spend the rest of summer with us?" My pa took a moment to consider, "Any Potter is welcome at our house whenever he wants to come."  
  
Dan grinned shyly, "Could I really?" I nodded enthusiastically, "Sure, Pops, will you go arrange it with whatever people you have to?" After making sure that Dan really did want to come to my house Pa went off to make the arrangements. "Hey Dan, want to come with me, I haven't gotten my stuff yet.have you?" Dan shook his head, "Nope, I didn't know where to go, I was looking for someone to ask." I grinned at him, "Well, you came to the right place. I've been coming to Diagon Alley all of my life. Come on, let's go get our robes first."  
  
I scampered along with a bit of jump in my step, skipping and jingling the money in my pocket. I stopped in front of Senor Sapple's Wizarding Clothes and pulled Dan inside, "I used to go to Malkins for my robes, but Sapple makes 'em better." Dan nodded, I doubt he even had any idea of what I was talking about.but that was okay. Senor Sapple looked up from his desk and smiled to see me, "Ah, hello James, ripped up yet another set of robes? Oh no, wait it'll be Hogwarts robes now won't it?" I nodded and he whipped out a magical measuring tape and set it to measuring us. Finally it gave him the measurements and he sat us down into two robbing chairs.  
  
I settled into my normal chair and waited for him to return while Dan looked around in awe. "Wow, that's a lot of robes, I haven't seen that many robes since I was with my.well before my dad died." I didn't know what to say so I didn't say anything. I felt sorry for Dan though, he had had it tough. We sat awkwardly in silence for a few minutes before Senor Sapple came rushing back into the room.  
  
"Well well, here are your normal school robes, and here are your cloaks, and what color dress robes would you like." I picked a robe that I though looked perfect, it was dark red with gold fringing. Dan nodded and got the same. I grinned at him as we waited for Senor Sapple to wrap our robes for us. "So Dan, how come you weren't with a big group, the um.schools that come usually are." Dan shrugged, "There's this kid, his name's Kilonny and he sort of rules the orphanage, even the grownups are afraid of him, he hates me so I can't do anything, he's a giant and he's got lots of goony followers." I nodded knowingly although growing up the way I had I didn't really understand.  
  
Senor Sapple appeared with our robes and gave us the bags, "Would you like anything else Dan?" I nodded, "We want to look around a little, we might want to get some extra suff." Sapple nodded and we started looking around the shop. In the middle of looking Dan looked at me, "James, I don't have any money with me, could you pay? I'll pay you back, I have the key to my Gringotts vault." I nodded, "Sure, no problem, I need to stop by Gringotts anyway to get some more money, you can come too."  
  
I was just looking for any old thing but Dan was amazed with whatever he saw. I could tell that he really wanted some of the things but it took me forever to convince him to let me buy them. When we walked out of the shop we were laden with our Hogwarts robes, a couple of "Kid's All purpose robes" for each of us, a pair of wizard boots for me (they fit your foot perfectly no matter what) and a set of normal wizard kid clothes for Dan (they fit perfectly and they're enchanted to repel water, float when "floatarius" is whispered, extinguish fire etc. all new to Dan).  
  
Now that I knew Dan didn't have any money with him I pulled him along to Gringotts to open up his account. We walked up to the counter, "Account numbers 45566 and 40804 please." I spoke to the goblin at the front desk who looked disdainfully down at the two of us, I handed him the two keys and he looked them over and then handed them back to us. "You'll be taken to your vaults by Ripchain over there." He pointed to a goblin and we followed Ripchain onto a cart that stood on some tracks. Instantly we were whizzing away through the passages.  
  
I've always loved coming to Gringotts and riding the carts, they're fast and almost as good as brooms. Dan seemed to enjoy it also and we grinned at each other as we whizzed through the dark underground.  
  
Without a word Ripchain opened Dan's vault and I whistled, it was packed full of galleons. I took a bag and held it open for Dan who shoveled some Galleons in, enough for all the things he needed for Hogwarts and plenty of extras. Then we whizzed to my vault where I reached in and grabbed the "for Hogwarts" deposit that my parents had sent.which of course included some extra. But just to make sure I shoveled some Galleons of my own into the bag and closed it. I signaled to Ripchain and he sent us back to the surface where we pocketed our keys and walked out of the goblin run bank.  
  
We went to all sorts of places which kept Dan gasping in amazement as we picked up our supplies. I s'pose that he'd probably been as used to it as I was before his dad died.but after four years it was all pretty new to him. Finally we had all of our equipment shopping out of the way and we went into Ollivanders to get our wands.  
  
The old man that came out of the gloom to greet us had to be ancient, his face was covered with wrinkles and he wore inch thick glasses. But judging by his agility he could have been twenty. He looked me up and down and then Dan, "I see, well young Potter, Black, what can I do for you today. Wait, don't answer, Hogwarts wands eh, take these and give 'em a wave." I took up the wand that he handed me and so did Dan. But instantly he gave us new ones,  
  
"hmmm, try this Daniel, hair of veela, beech, 7 ½ inches nice and swishy." Dan picked it up and was immediately handed another one while I received "Try this James, quite new design, Dragon heart-string, willow, 13 ¼ inches, quite supple." And so it went until he pulled out two boxes that looked quite different from the rest. "Ah well, I've just finished with these, you two seem to be tricky customers, try them out." Dan and I picked the wands up at the same time and instantly sparks shot out of both ends, brilliant flashing sparks. Mr. Olivander smiled, "Very good, those are almost twin wands you know, phoenix, oak, 8 ½ very light. Good for all sorts of things.Transfiguration definitely. Now shoo." We paid Mr. Olivander and ran out of the shop.  
  
"Mr. Olivander is sort of creepy." Dan whispered, I nodded fervently, he definitely was creepy. "Hey, Dan. Now that we've got most of our stuff let's go to Flourish and Blott's to get our books and then to get our animals." Dan nodded and I led him into the bookstore. It didn't take long to find all of our books and then we decided that we could get one extra each, I chose The Quidditch Kids: The Cursed Beater Bat. The Quidditch kids are my favorite wizarding book series. In every book when you read the last page you get a surprise, in the last book I read I got a pair of omnoculars. Dan wasn't sure what he wanted to get but he ended up getting the first Quidditch Kids book.  
  
I checked my watch, Gramps had enchanted it for the day with my schedule. Now the hand was pointing to the picture of lots of animals, it was time to get myself an owl. "Hey Dan, what kind of pet are you going to get?" Dan grinned, "Definitely an owl." I grinned too, "Then come on Danny me boy, we've got to get ourselves some owls." We ran across the street to where a bold sign proclaimed, Diagon Owlley my grandpa had told me that it was the best owlery in town, and he always knew what he was talking about. We rushed into the building and halted suddenly as darkness greeted us, hoots were sounding all around us and I took my wand out and whispered the only spell that my dad had ever let me do with his wand, "lumos." Instantly we could see much better. We walked among the cages but all of the owls just didn't suit our fancy, until we were wandering in a small dark corner we heard two low hoots, I held my wand closer to the sound and there in a small cage were two identical owls, with dark brown plumage and dark markings on their faces.  
  
"Look Dan!" I grabbed the cage and held it up. "That marking over their eyes looks almost like a lightning bolt!" he nodded excitedly and although we wandered throughout the store some more we kept returning to those two owls and we finally decided to buy them. I walked up to a young man dressed in the shocking pink robes that showed that he worked for Diagon Owlley and murmured, "How much would these cost sir?" he looked at me and then shrugged. "One galleon for the two, that's right, one galleon please." I handed him the money and we left the shop. Instantly we opened the cage door and the two perfect little balls of feather sat blinking on our palms. I grinned down at my little owl and perched him on my shoulder, "Come on Dan, a quick stop at the joke shop and then on towards home."  
  
~One Week Later~  
  
"Wake up James!" I groaned at Dan as he shook me awake, then lifted my head off the pillow and whacked him with it before sitting up and yawning. "Come on James, we'll be late for the train!" then I remembered, today we were leaving for Hogwarts! I leapt out of bed and yanked my pajamas off and pulled on a shirt some jeans and a flannel shirt that I kept around for going out into the muggle world and yanked my sneakers on before flying down the stairs to eat.  
  
In the week that I had known Dan he had become like a brother to me, we did everything together. And now at least, I knew that I would definitely have one friend at Hogwarts. I grinned as I wolfed down my Certified Wizardry Cereal and then leaped up. Dan and I had packed the night before and we were very ready to go. My dad was already waiting with the latest "Wizard Wheeler" a new wizarding invention that looked just like a car but was enchanted to do pretty much anything.  
  
I hopped into the seat next to Dan and my dad pressed the invisibility button. This button activated the certain spell that would make muggles see the car pulling out of the driveway and trundling along down the street as the real car took off into the air. I watched out the window as my home disappeared far below me and then looked eagerly ahead, hoping to catch a view of the station.  
  
Five minutes later with a groan and a crunch we were parked in a tiny parking space and I jumped out of the car, pulling my trunk and Lightning, my owl out with me. I turned around and around looking for a sign for "Platform 9 and ¾" until I heard a laugh from behind me. "Come on boys, let's take you to your train. And with that my dad strode right through a wall. I jumped and then shrugged, living in the magical world made you get used to odd things. I gulped and beckoning to Dan to follow me strode through the wall. To my surprise there was a giant red engine with the words "Hogwarts Express" printed on a gold plate in the very front. I stared up in awe at the train that I knew was going to take me off to the beginning of a new life. Dan came up behind me and together we made our way onto the train. We searched for a while before managing to find an empty compartment where we sat down to wait.  
  
"Well, this is it." I murmured. Dan nodded and we were both silent for a minute. Then there was a knock at our door and a stout woman with a large cart filled with treats filled the door. "Would you like to purchase anything?" we had forgotten to pack anything to eat and we were both starving even though we had eaten breakfast only a few minutes before. I pulled out some money and we grabbed as much as we could and payed her seventeen little knuts. She left and we started in on some Bertie Bott's Every Flavored Beans. I searched through all of the normal looking beans to find a very weird looking one. It was sort of grainy yellow looking. It turned out to be sand. We found all sorts of different flavors, carrot, turnip, rotten egg, spoiled milk, mud, tree bark.bleck. Some of the flavors were really disgusting. Dan got one that he decided must be barf and we avoided them after that.  
  
Over the holiday's Dan had started to collect Chocolate frogs so we ripped open that package next. I immediately pounced on the Harry Potter card because I had never seen it before. I turned it over and looked at the back. "Harry Potter is considered one of the greatest wizards of all time. He brought around the first and second downfalls of the evil Lord Voldemort and also helped develop the advanced theory of-and there the writing on the card stopped. I shrugged and turned the card over to see Harry Potter waving up at me. I grinned down at him and pocketed the card. Even without all of the writing on the back I didn't have a Harry Potter yet. At that moment two boys burst into the compartment. They were out of breath and redfaced.  
  
"Can we share a compartment?" the two boys were obviously twins and they looked so alike that my head was swimming. "We had to use Floo powder to get into the fire that's in the prefects compartment because we were so late that we missed the train!" Dan and I nodded, "Course you can share, we've got plenty of space." The two boys greatfully sat down and we started our introductions. "We're Nate," started one, "No we're not, you're Nate I'm Nick, we're not both Nate." Argued the other.  
  
"Okay, so one of you is Nate and one of you is Nick. I'm James Black and this is Dan Potter." The boys looked in surprise at us and then grinned. "Cool, what house do you guys want to be in?" I shrugged, "Well, Gryffindor really, you know, all that stuff about brave. I like it better than being loyal even though that's good, or wise. You know?" The three others nodded. I could tell that I liked these boys already.  
  
I settled down to read comfortably for the rest of the trip from the joke book that my dad had given me as a going away present. I turned the page and found a nice simple looking spell "Frog Barfing" I read the instructions and looked carefully for the correct word. Ah, there we go. Just as I was pointing out the charm to Nate and Nick the compartment door flew open. "Well, well, what do we have here. Filthy little dung brain Potty and his friends huh?" at the door stood a blonde haired boy, there wasn't anything special about him but I didn't like him. He strode into the room followed by two boys who were bristling with muscle. Their vacant expressions suggested that these two were all brawn and no brains. "I suppose you twerps don't know who I am. Well except for Potty over there. If you want to hang with the right crowd join me. I'm Kilonny Malfoy and that Mudblood tried to stand up to me. Beat 'im up."  
  
Instantly I knew what was happening. Dan had told me about this Malfoy. He was a rich snob. I grinned and signaled Nate and Nick. They grinned as I whispered my plan to them. I whispered, "Ribbitus." And as Malfoy opened his mouth to talk a large frog hopped up his throat perched on his tongue and gave a loud resounding "RIBBIT!" Kilonny and his similarly affected cronies ran screaming (and spewing frogs) from the compartment. The rest of the journey passed uneventfully and then we heard the loud toot of the train's whistle. We had reached Hogwarts!  
  
~  
  
We all jumped out of our seats, we hadn't known that the ride would be so short. It felt as if we had only been on the train for a few minutes. We scrambled around gathering all of our things and carefully packing them away. We slipped on our robes and fairly leaped off the train in our anxiety to reach Hogwarts. To our surprise outside it was stormy. We huddled together against the wind until to our surprise we heard a voice behind us.  
  
"Come along first years. We've got to get you across that lake don't we." We whirled to find standing behind a tall young man with curly hair.there was only one thing different from usual about this man.he was a ghost! "Hugh Bryant at your service, I'm the gamekeeper you know. Come on, it'll be a pretty wild ride."  
  
We were all too amazed to do anything but follow him as he walked in front of us on his pearly legs. We were all still too spellbound to open our mouths when we were led to a small fleet of boats, each one large enough to seat four people in. Nate, Nick, Dan and I gently squeezed into one and instantly, we magically set off. The lake was full of ten foot waves that towered above us. We could feel our boat being tossed. Then suddenly a giant wave came crashing down onto our boat. Instantly we were all sent into the water. I was sinking through the wild waters and I struggled as hard as I could, but it was impossible. I was steadily sinking. Then I remembered one of the levitating spells from my jokebook. "Risino" I whispered.  
  
For a few seconds nothing happened, then I was being pushed up above the water. A wave drove me onto shore panting and gasping for air. I was glad that our luggage had been taken separately to the castle and slowly I stood up. In front of me was one of the most awesome sights I had ever seen. Hogwarts castle was lit up with countless lights. It's towers stuck pins into the very clouds. I gasped in amazement as I looked up at the majestic castle that was to be my home for the next seven years.  
  
I looked around the beach that I stood on and saw other first years being swept onto the beach clinging to broken pieces of boat. I looked up again and saw fleets of brooms swooping down onto the beach. A tall redhead landed on the beach next to me. I noticed him but didn't say anything as my eyes worriedly swept the beach, searching for Dan. Nate and Nick I had already found. Gasping for breath and coughing up lakewater but otherwise unharmed.  
  
The redhead tapped me on the shoulder, "Come on kiddo, we've got to get you all up to the castle. I shook my head vigorously, "I've got to find my friend. He isn't here." The redhead frowned and then grinned. "I'll try using a Summoning Spell, maybe I can summon your friend here." The boy reached into his pocket and pulled out his brightly gleaming wand and then turned back to me, "What's you friends name?" "Dan." He nodded and whispered. "Accio Dan."  
  
I looked around expectantly but nothing happened. He frowned, "Maybe you can help. Take out your wand and say "Accio Dan". Maybe it'll work." I did as I was told and a few seconds later I saw Dan speeding through the air towards me. He landed on the ground at my feet looking dazed, he looked up at me and whispered, "I flew.". 


End file.
